Regret

I know it has been awhile since I posted last. Honestly, I haven't had a whole lot to say. My allergies are kicking my butt this year, worse than any other year and making me sick all the time. It's all I can do to just keep going. Hopefully soon I will be approved for the asthma shot (since I failed all the tests that I needed to in order to qualify) and then a few months of that shot and I will be ready to start the allergy shots. Yes, shots plural because I am going to need at least 3 every week until I hit my maintenance dose. It doesn't sound fun, but it sure beats being sick.

So enough of the excuses, today I wanted to talk about regret. It has been something I have been thinking about since I woke up this morning. Last night, I had very vivid dreams which involved me in situations I have had in my life. But in my dreams, all the mistakes I made, the choices I regret, the things I said that I regret, I chose differently and it was interesting how I kept hoping things would turn out differently. That I could somehow make up for so many things that I had regret for. Almost like one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that we all use to read as kids. I was the kind of person that would choose and then if I didn't like how things were going, I would go back and choose the other option. I think sometimes I wish life had a go back option. Where you fix the things you regret most. You do it differently. Regret isn't good. I know this. It can be like a cancer to your soul and prevent you from growing and learning. I know we can't go back and change things or react differently. I know I wish I could. I think we all do sometimes. It would stop our growth though from learning from our mistakes. I am just grateful that my alarm woke me up this morning before I could see in my dream if doing things differently might have alter my life in some way. It is probably less painful not knowing "what could or might have been". My very favorite book, "Tuesdays with Morrie" has some good advice from Morrie himself. He says, "We...need to forgive ourselves...For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done. You can't get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened."

This is such a true statement. The field I work in with hospice, I always see many different ways of dying. Some are peaceful, some painful, and some just suffer miserably. But of all those I have seen at the end of their life, the ones with such huge regrets seem to suffer the most. That I believe is because it isn't actual physical anguish that is the most painful, usually the emotional anguish of our regrets, our mistakes, and our fear of whether or not we will be forgiven is what causes the most pain. It is what weights on our soul and what we take with us from this life. The physical pain we leave in this world, but that emotionally can follow us into the eternities.

I know I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. Some I worry may have changed the way my life was meant to be, but I have to let go of any regret from those mistakes. If I don't let go of it, it will consume me. We all have to learn how to forgive the hardest person in the world to forgive and that is ourselves. We have to let go of the "could have, should have, would have" things and learn to be happy and okay with who we have become. I write this for me so that I can read this again on a day when I wake up like I did today and remember to just take a deep breath and let it go, at least until they invent the time machine for me to go back and fix some things :). (Sorry that's the perfectionist in me).